Combat is boring, a note to Henrik.

[Solairerection]

After spending the week or so duelling and groupfighting, in various sizes, I can concur that the combat is quite boring. Mainly the slow movement-speed aswell as the parry-botting is my main gripe.

I still don't quite get why StarVault is keeping their current blocking-system. Afterall, isn't the point of their current work of optimisation and slowing everything down because the server can't handle it aswell as you can never truly get rid of latency issues? So why do they keep a system that relies on timing in a game that has and will continue to have a global server?

What tricks does Henrik has in his hat that will magically fix combat in it's current state? I heard rumours of adding special abilities and a hefty kick. If he intended the game to be as slow as it is today why did they waste 9 months of testing by not adding anything to the combat? They have made good leaps in the map-creation and crafting, but not a hint of development in melee-combat, other than slowing everything down.

 

[Buffallo]

After spending the week or so duelling and groupfighting, in various sizes, I can concur that the combat is quite boring. Mainly the slow movement-speed aswell as the parry-botting is my main gripe.

I still don't quite get why StarVault is keeping their current blocking-system. Afterall, isn't the point of their current work of optimisation and slowing everything down because the server can't handle it aswell as you can never truly get rid of latency issues? So why do they keep a system that relies on timing in a game that has and will continue to have a global server?

What tricks does Henrik has in his hat that will magically fix combat in it's current state? I heard rumours of adding special abilities and a hefty kick. If he intended the game to be as slow as it is today why did they waste 9 months of testing by not adding anything to the combat? They have made good leaps in the map-creation and crafting, but not a hint of development in melee-combat, other than slowing everything down.

That's exactly what I've been saying but yes there are some series of argumentation being made available and it I think stems from a few core concepts as well as how they already ammended the system. I happen to think a reworking of actual block mechanic (and I have to be specific) That I mean that the time inbetween the animation of block (which should still be rapid as in mo1) should have a seperation of the initiation of said mechanism. For what purpose? For the aforementioned reasons but also to offer the newbie a possible chance to do damage vs excessively defensive as well as overzealously aggresive players. If they chain that alongside positioning and well thought out swift movement to advantaged positions which doesn't require too high demanding reflexes but spatial awareness they will quickly overturn a fight or at least stand against it. Several moving parts have been hamstringed and it feels that way.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Combat feels so horrible. Can't express this enough.

Also, for those of you saying the slow combat got rid of the desync. Not it didn't - It actually makes it so low ping players with ping normalization now do this weird crappy hit / parry in one animation. People still run in place, animations randomly speed up and slow down.

It being slow has done nothing but make the combat repulsive, and people trying to brush it off with "well the group combat is good!" no, it's not. Playing with a bunch of people and having fun with your friends or zerging people doesn't make the combat 'good' in groups.

You know what it feels like? Inconsistent, clunky chaos.

Bring back some videos of successfully fighting 2 good players whilst being good yourself and tell me how that goes.

 

[Qik]

Let's bring it back to making the game a prediction simulator, I say screw blocking in it's entirety!

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Let's bring it back to making the game a prediction simulator, I say screw blocking in it's entirety!

MO1 had better melee combat. The only thing I'd change, personally, is the amount of damage piercing weapons did. But the fundamentals were so much better. People who weren't good showed, and people who were showed.

Now it's just whoever has enough patience to duel for 15 minutes, or in a group fight literally expending your entire stam bar going aggressive on someone for 2 hits in.

You want someone dead, you have to coordinate attacking at the same time with different directions because even a remotely decent player can survive; unless they are on low stamina because the game doesn't allow you to get stamina back when you're being swarmed.

There is just, so much wrong with how the melee works in MO2.


Weapon variety is dead. People who use anything other than a sword or a spear are gimping themselves because of how easy it is to parry things.

One handed weapons aside from a dagger are inferior just like they were in MO1.

Blunt weapons no longer chip through parries on foot (Shouldn't off horseback, should on foot.)

Poles were absolutely DESTROYED in usability. Compare fluidity and usability of a polesword in MO1 to MO2. Trash weapon now. Poleaxes were even useful in MO1, now they're not. Speed is slow, animations are super readable, damage is terrible with handle hits.


Two handed axes are.. okay? But it's just kind of pointless to use them for stamina and speed reasons.

Archery is alright, can't judge much yet though since there is no bow crafting in yet.

Armor differences are kind of annoying. It has the same weight system as MO1 in it's later iteration where it starts at 14 and stamina regen lowers from thereafter on a curve. But the difference between 14 and 24 weight armor is 14 weight is about 17.5 seconds and 24 weight is about 23-25 seconds. (Usually on the lower end.) So you're talking MAYBE a 6-7 difference at max in stamina regen from 0 to max stamina.

Stamina feels garbage, it regens super slow regardless of armor weight; and it gets used up quickly. It's not even a matter of stamina management, you get low stamina and you have people on you; you can not recover. You'll never hit a 'positive' stamina amount even if only 2 people are on you because getting hit drains stamina, whilst you're also blocking.

I could go on about other little things like people swinging at the ground to speed up their next swing, or people literally jumping / spinning (Which by the way, looks WAY WORSE than any desync I've seen in MO1 or MO2) to 'hide' swings. Feinting sucks and feels like it has no impact.

Combat sucks. It just, sucks.

 

[Speznat]

its not 100% perfect like it is now. but a combat slowdown is good longer fights, and as pvp noob like me doable and enjoyable.

 

[Teknique]

Combat feels so horrible. Can't express this enough.

Also, for those of you saying the slow combat got rid of the desync. Not it didn't - It actually makes it so low ping players with ping normalization now do this weird crappy hit / parry in one animation. People still run in place, animations randomly speed up and slow down.

It being slow has done nothing but make the combat repulsive, and people trying to brush it off with "well the group combat is good!" no, it's not. Playing with a bunch of people and having fun with your friends or zerging people doesn't make the combat 'good' in groups.

You know what it feels like? Inconsistent, clunky chaos.

Bring back some videos of successfully fighting 2 good players whilst being good yourself and tell me how that goes.

Are you talking about the instant recovery on successful hit?

If its something else can you show a vid?

If you're talking about 1:36 that's a real mechanic, but i'm assuming you know about that and are talking about something else

 

[Ori]

Combat feels absolutely great.

Combat feels so horrible. Can't express this enough.

Also, for those of you saying the slow combat got rid of the desync. Not it didn't - It actually makes it so low ping players with ping normalization now do this weird crappy hit / parry in one animation. People still run in place, animations randomly speed up and slow down.

It being slow has done nothing but make the combat repulsive, and people trying to brush it off with "well the group combat is good!" no, it's not. Playing with a bunch of people and having fun with your friends or zerging people doesn't make the combat 'good' in groups.

You know what it feels like? Inconsistent, clunky chaos.

Bring back some videos of successfully fighting 2 good players whilst being good yourself and tell me how that goes.

We don't get any of the issues you mention in our fights except hit / parry, which is just fast reactions in the system given.

 

[Qik]

MO1 had better melee combat. The only thing I'd change, personally, is the amount of damage piercing weapons did. But the fundamentals were so much better. People who weren't good showed, and people who were showed.

Now it's just whoever has enough patience to duel for 15 minutes, or in a group fight literally expending your entire stam bar going aggressive on someone for 2 hits in.

You want someone dead, you have to coordinate attacking at the same time with different directions because even a remotely decent player can survive; unless they are on low stamina because the game doesn't allow you to get stamina back when you're being swarmed.

There is just, so much wrong with how the melee works in MO2.


Weapon variety is dead. People who use anything other than a sword or a spear are gimping themselves because of how easy it is to parry things.

One handed weapons aside from a dagger are inferior just like they were in MO1.

Blunt weapons no longer chip through parries on foot (Shouldn't off horseback, should on foot.)

Poles were absolutely DESTROYED in usability. Compare fluidity and usability of a polesword in MO1 to MO2. Trash weapon now. Poleaxes were even useful in MO1, now they're not. Speed is slow, animations are super readable, damage is terrible with handle hits.


Two handed axes are.. okay? But it's just kind of pointless to use them for stamina and speed reasons.

Archery is alright, can't judge much yet though since there is no bow crafting in yet.

Armor differences are kind of annoying. It has the same weight system as MO1 in it's later iteration where it starts at 14 and stamina regen lowers from thereafter on a curve. But the difference between 14 and 24 weight armor is 14 weight is about 17.5 seconds and 24 weight is about 23-25 seconds. (Usually on the lower end.) So you're talking MAYBE a 6-7 difference at max in stamina regen from 0 to max stamina.

Stamina feels garbage, it regens super slow regardless of armor weight; and it gets used up quickly. It's not even a matter of stamina management, you get low stamina and you have people on you; you can not recover. You'll never hit a 'positive' stamina amount even if only 2 people are on you because getting hit drains stamina, whilst you're also blocking.

I could go on about other little things like people swinging at the ground to speed up their next swing, or people literally jumping / spinning (Which by the way, looks WAY WORSE than any desync I've seen in MO1 or MO2) to 'hide' swings. Feinting sucks and feels like it has no impact.

Combat sucks. It just, sucks.

Can you post some gameplay footage on your end so I could see what these issues are.

 

[Javelin]

Players on foot are different than players on mounts. Mounts have inertia and a strong turning speed cap, making their movement highly predictable allowing them to move faster without causing visual issues.

People on foot can turn on a dime and switch directions rapidly while spinning their camera around, making their movement not very predictable at all, and thus a slower movement is required to maintain visual positional integrity.

The state of the game before the ping normalization was added and move speed was reduced was not at all an acceptable level of quality for a global market. You may have a lower standard of quality than SV, as having massive desync issues and huge advantages given to low ping players is a recipe for being labelled an unfair buggy mess, much like MO1 was.

The highest population in MO1 was during steam release, and it dwindled down from there to where we are now.

The first patch in MO2 was bugged and our dexterity was not giving the appropriate speed bonuses, so they fixed the bug. They did not increase player speed due to feedback, they simply made it what it was intended to be in the first place.

Appealing to a global audience by way of reducing the skill ceiling making the game more accessible to less skilled players is not synonymous with making specific adjustments to the combat speeds and introducing a ping normalization system that relies on those speed adjustments. This was done to make the game actually function for people with medium and higher ping, instead of heavily favouring low ping players while high ping players simply could not physically block attacks above a certain speed.

Now that the game is mechanically as fair as it can be across the ping spectrum, we can fine tune the things that can be fine tuned.

It has nothing to do with being hardcore, or a willingness to overcome a challenge. It's about being on an actually fair playing field from the beginning.

Let's look at some examples of accessible games that have high skill caps and are played by enormous amounts of players of varying skill levels.

Fortnite.
Apex.
Mordhau.
Chivalry.
Mount and Blade.
Warzone.
Counter Strike.
Valorant.
PubG.

Now most of these are shooters that require excellent precision and predictability. So stop acting like there's some huge technological hurdle they have to overcome. Or that it needs to be watered down to be more "accessible". Or that because it's an MMO it has to be slow (your population is like less than 100 people logged in and it's slow and full of desync, what do you think is gonna happen at scale?).

This goes back to my argument of pick a lane, either be a competitive hardcore game or be a casual no skill game but pick a lane so that the hardcore players here can find something else or vice versa.

I also got news for you, having a shit combat system does not appeal to anyone and if you believe it somehow sets the game up to be more successful you're delusional because it's the opposite. Games live or die by their gameplay and in it's current state MO2 is dead on arrival.

Whoever is in charge has not planned a design that works at scale. This game has been designed to work with a specific population size and that alone is going to handicap this project.

A single world on a single server or server cluster DOES NOT SCALE.

Population of 100? Works fine.
Population of 20,000 at launch? Will break apart.

What could they have done to make this project work at scale?

Regional Server Clusters to reduce ping.
Map Regions that can spin up new instances of each region when there's population overflow. If the performance cap for a given area is 200 people then spin up a new instance when you go over that. Keep nodes would be on their own region.
(THIS TECH ALREADY EXISTS NATIVELY IN UNREAL).

Doing these things would of made room for this game to support a successful launch and handle a population if it ballooned. It also would of reduced perf costs and allowed for fast paced combat and lower pings.

I do not give a flying fuck about players who want to share a single world with everyone, it's a shit idea that doesn't scale. If you want some social experience go play second life.

In it's current state, in the way it's currently designed as soon as the population increases everything's going to break. It's not an opinion it's a technological fact, so put down your coolaid because it's not helping.

 

[Rorry]

They have much work to do on the server as well as the combat, this is what it looks like half the time in Bakti. It feels worse than it looks, with mouse not responsive and movement lurching. Very much not fun.

Everyone, please move out of Bakti. Crowds in other places haven't had bad effect like this.

 

[Teknique]

They have much work to do on the server as well as the combat, this is what it looks like half the time in Bakti. It feels worse than it looks, with mouse not responsive and movement lurching. Very much not fun.

Everyone, please move out of Bakti. Crowds in other places haven't had bad effect like this.

wow Pat is very much out of sync there

 

[Rorry]

wow Pat is very much out of sync there

It isn't only him. Half the time everyone there is like that (so it may be me, but I haven't had that anywhere else.) I made the video from dueling him because he is well known and respected.

 

[Teknique]

It isn't only him. Half the time everyone there is like that (so it may be me, but I haven't had that anywhere else.) I made the video from dueling him because he is well known and respected.

The Sith look down on sabre combat, only a jedi would be so weak to require weapons. I'm stronger than Patwins I can overthrow him, and the EL Cartel will make Nave the way we want it to be.

Plata O Plomo

 

[Theodosius]

A lada looks like a mazarati if you've never seen a car before

Unfortunately, current combat isn't even passable. I would consider it completely unacceptable for an MMO centered around FP fighting.. everything just feels.. off.

 

[Darthus]

I get that this is a hot discussion and important to have, but there are so many things about this thread that bug me.

If you want to send a message from the community to the devs, do a poll so they can see what the general community thinks (more than 50% think the combat is an improvement over MO1 btw, 25% neutral and 24% think worse).

Also the title of this thread just grates my eyes everytime I see it and encourages divisive conversation. "Combat is boring" (a lazy clickbait judgement), "note to Henrik" (personal callout to the CEO in a forum thread title, as if this thread in particular deserves his personal attention because the OP thinks it does).

These types of "hot discussion" threads (we're up to 10 pages, are we getting anywhere?) without any focus just serve to amplify the loud few who have an issue without really honing in on the overall community's opinion on a focused topic.

 

[Ministro]

Everyone, please move out of Bakti. Crowds in other places haven't had bad effect like this.

no, stay in bakti ( I play there) this is *exactly* what they need to see. And fix.

 

[Piet]

I don't think it's really slow. I think a lot of people are using great swords which are kinda slow. Say for instance the sledge hammer it is about the same speed as the sword hell if you make it right it's faster and it can kill someone in 5ish hits because it takes more skill to not handle hit they reward you for it. That is just one example, poleaxe, short weapons, ect. Way faster combat. Stop using just great blades.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

The people who think the combat is good are the same people who will think almost anything skill-gutting is good.

It's been explained with a plethora of reasons as to why long term the fundamentals of combat won't age well. Have you noticed some of the best players, granted some are self appointed because of how crutched the system is, say the combat is no good. Do you think they say that just to waste time? Why would people who are already at the top disagree with how it works if they are in their own eyes and others 'the best?

Probably because the people who have vastly more experience in MO and other melee-like games have experienced different systems within MO and other games to know what does and doesn't work.

Right now, MO2 doesn't promote skill. There are just people who are slightly better and have better reactions, but an average player can hold their own fairly well against the most mechanically adept. After mechanically adept, ping comes into play. Since the combat is so slow anyone who is mechanically skilled and has good ping - you'll realistically never land a hit on them unless you get lucky and land a good trade.

If you ever want to see who has good ping just look for the people who run around naked and try to duel. They know they won't die because the system crutches and pads their mechanical skill whilst their ping allows uncanny reaction.

The melee system doesn't promote any kind of meaningful skill growth where as MO1 players could progressively get better.

Pulling up the statistics of a poll doesn't reflect the entire communities view. I made a poll to try and gage the communities opinion on delaying release and over 116 people voted, just because a majority voted to delay doesn't mean a majority of the community was for it (even though they were).

Point being, I have a fair amount of people in my guild and only 1 of them has a forum account aside from myself.. and they all think the combat is bad. People in the official discord I know say the combat is bad, there are other pockets of people saying its no good, not to mention the threads that pop up over it. If it wasn't bad there wouldn't be such a vocal outcry.

I know a fair amount of you think the slow combat is better, and have your own reasoning. But please realize a lot of people who are making these threads and trying to draw attention to the topic aren't trying to change the game so it befits them - a lot of them what are environment that encourages skill and the ability to grow in it so the more you practice, theoretically, the better you get. Rather than you hit the ceiling in a few hours as it is now.

I personally can't stand the combat. It drives me crazy. Its inconsistent as all he'll, it still desyncs massively with people running in place and warping around, I get clean hits in my screen and get parried whilst I parry on my screen and still get hit for full damage, etc.

There is also a ton of other stuff wrong with it, in other threads, I've even given lists and reasoning.

The combat is going to age quickly regardless of offensive moves being added, magic, etc. I'm telling you right now - if it stays the same, you're going to watch foot fighters just die out slowly as its not responsive or practical. If you had a choice to play a footfighter or a hybrid with this current combat - the better players will opt to hybrids and then you'll really be hurting and confused when you're just getting slammed by people who just sit and parry you whilst cross healing, corrupt spamming to prevent bandages, and hitting you with spells.

 

[Kaemik]

Pulling up the statistics of a poll doesn't reflect the entire communities view. I made a poll to try and gage the communities opinion on delaying release and over 116 people voted, just because a majority voted to delay doesn't mean a majority of the community was for it (even though they were).

Point being, I have a fair amount of people in my guild and only 1 of them has a forum account aside from myself.. and they all think the combat is bad. People in the official discord I know say the combat is bad, there are other pockets of people saying its no good, not to mention the threads that pop up over it. If it wasn't bad there wouldn't be such a vocal outcry.

This is the second time today you've used anecdotes to dispute statistics. I keep using the phrase "anecdotes are not evidence" because it's one of the first things that will get covered if you take a college-level debate course. Anecdotes can be derived from outliers or insulated communities with high levels of group-think. Statistical evidence is generally more evenly drawn from the relevant population and thus provides a far more solid foundation for an argument than an anecdote.

While you are correct that 53% support vs. 28.2% opposition is not an indisputable figure in a self-selected respondents survey, it is considerably stronger evidence than "Well my buddies said." First off, yeah. People ARE saying that. If the poll numbers are accurate only a bit less than a third of players are. And why would we not expect like-minded players to play together? If I dispute left-wing talking points on my left-wing friends walls they rally and support each other. If dispute right-wing talking points on my right-wing friend's walls they rally around and support each other. It's only a reasonable assumption that guilds that pride themselves on their twitch skills are going to congregate, and those who disagree with their views are less likely to speak up against stances you seem so passionate about.

So while that survey could very easily have different results if taken using more rigorous methods, it is way better evidence than the non-arguments you keep bringing to the table. If I'm a board room executive hearing two competing ideas on which way to invest my money, and for some reason, I HAVE to accept one of two proposals right then and there, and the two competing proposals are "This self-respondent survey has a 25% gap in results favoring our conclusion" and one is "Well my buddies think..." guess which pitch is getting my money? Questionable data is better than no data.